Mono, Bliss, Supernova and I was in the paper!!

I got all of the quilting done on my monochromatic quilt over the week-end!  The nice big arm on my new machine helped me do a ton of straight line quilting in the center blocks!  It took me much longer to do the straight stitching, and there were a few times that I wondered if I should have, but in the end, I just LOVE the way it turned out!!  Only the binding is left to do now.  And now that it's not part of the monochromatic quilt contest, I want to come up with a better name for it.  It was inspired by robes and leather work that's displayed at a local museum of Native Americans, so I'm thinking "Native", or "Tribal", or "Feaux Leather"...  Any other suggestions?

My kids had Friday off from school last week, and the museum has a wonderful new exhibit that opened that day, so we went there, I again admired the bead, basket, and leather work, and we all enjoyed ourselves very much!  They don't allow pictures of exhibits, but I did take these pictures of a wild bird rehab center that had an informative session that day, and a picture of the outside back of the museum that I took from the cafe where we ate lunch!  What a view!!

After finishing the "Mono Quilt", I got my "Bliss" quilt out to finish.  Right away, I started having problems (after nothing but smooth sailing with mono)!  I'm starting to think that the Bliss quilt should be renamed too, because it's been anything but blissful quilting it.  I started to wonder if the quilting pattern that I'm doing may be part of the problem.  Or the fabric?  Or the white thread (I've tried 5 different spools!)?  My old machine gave me problems on the quilt, the new one hates it, and I'm starting to wonder how I will ever get it done!  I started taking my frustration out on the quilt, and decided then that it was time to put it away yet again!  Any ideas out there?  Ugh!!

I don't know about you, but when I get frustrated quilting something, it's time to change gears and do something fun, like starting a NEW QUILT!  Here's the "Super Nova" quilt that I'm doing with "Freshly Pieced".  I'm using up all of my batik scraps.  I was a bit concerned about how it would come together, and without the entire pattern in front of me, made some assumptions when I cut out the fabric initially, and cut all squares.  I was about to quit after realizing I'd made a bad assumption, but found some fat quarters in my stash that I could use instead.  Now that I can see it coming together, I'm glad I stuck with it.  I think it's going to be a beautiful quilt!

My last bit of news is that I WAS IN THE NEWS!!  Our local art center wrote up and submitted an article about my Med Tech Quilt!  It was in the local newspaper last week!  It's the first time ever that I've been in any newspaper!  Here's the link!  Whew hew!!